Mirrors
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Is the expressionless vampire twin as calm as he appears? (Kamui and Subaru, Seishirou and Subaru pairings)


**fandom: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle**  
 **title: Mirrors.**  
 **pairing: Kamui + Subaru, Seishirou + Subaru**  
 **rating: pg-13**  
 **description – Is the expressionless vampire twin as calm as he appears?**

 **Disclaimer – Tsubasa isn't mine. I just watch it for particular reasons. * smirk ***

 **Mirrors.**  
 **By miyamoto yui**

As soon as the mourning sun lifts itself above the watery purgatory , the slow music box-like tune delicately goes off like a knife against a bell. It is from a grandfather watch inside a dark coat pocket hanging on the wooden bedpost.  
A boy of sixteen blinks his eyes one by one and searches for the tune with his ears. Like slits of light and dark in photographs seen through dewdrops, the scene before him looks like waves of blurry, watery strips.  
He pats the pillow and looks towards the warm light that's touching his face. From far away, the tall glass building with its blinking red lights looks very near. The boy fully opens his eyes. He blinks once and then the next time, he turns away from the open balcony door with its flowing white curtain.  
Turning over, he looks over at the boy who looks like him but doesn't at the same time. Every morning, he does the same thing and his eyes gaze at his brother, who doesn't wake up to the alarm on his own watch. Maybe it is because his brother doesn't know how to turn it off.  
It makes him a little mad because they have to wake up like this every morning. And his eyes watch his sleeping twin with those long eyelashes and that pallid face with its thin lips that didn't bother to move unless there was something important to say.  
That open mouth breathing carelessly with its moist lips and his upper teeth barely showing…  
Ashamed, the boy of sixteen with the tight black turtleneck gulps. His eyes immediately shift their gaze to his twin's hands. He finally notices his twin hasn't changed clothes at all.  
Even his gloves are still on with the ruffles half covering them. His twin's right hand holds onto the pillow tightly. Moving his eyes upwards, he sees that open neck. The collar of white is half in and half out.  
He doesn't like it. It always tempts him to touch it and he always feels as dirty as that person…  
He wants to touch his twin's hand, but if he does, he'll know who touched him. He is very sensitive that way. Sometimes, he hated his own power, which was amplified by his own twin.

It is always at this point that he wants to take what he thinks should always be his. They share the same blood because of that bond, right? It is also at this very second that his heart wants to burst and logic pushes itself back into his head, loosely covering the small cracks appearing inside his heart.

One more look at his twin and he knows it is his duty to break that peace. And the music box tune continues to play in the background as he feels the sun poking him from the back.  
"Subaru…" Leaning forward, he closes his eyes and tiredly, but carefully whispers urgently, "We have to go. We must leave NOW."  
"Mm…" the twin called Subaru says as if in pain. His eyes scrunch up and he gulps.  
His tired eyes open, they look like they don't ever get sleep. He feels like he just goes in and out of consciousness, but every time he wakes up, he doesn't feel rested.  
He always wants to wake up somewhere else than from where his mind or heart wants to be.

 **To live this life,  
why must we keep running away from the person who pursues me?**

Subaru gets up and sweeps his hand over his coat pocket. As if it understood the warmth of his touch, the melody turns off suddenly. He silently puts on his coat as Kamui watches him, waiting for the words that Subaru is hesitant to say.  
Shaking, Subaru bites his lip as he pulls on the chain around his chest and positions it comfortably on his shoulder. For the first time in years, he opens his mouth to say, "We should just wait for him."  
It is said as if it is in a whisper in a dream. The tone he says it in is not an observation and nor is it an opinion.  
Kamui pulls on his red belt on the counter and he bites the muscles of his mouth from the inside. Looking away in disgust, he answers in frigid annoyance, "You are the one who told him he had to find you."  
Subaru turns to go towards the bathroom. "I didn't tell him anything."  
"It's what you don't say that's the most scary." Kamui's blood is boiling. He catches Subaru's right wrist and holds it firmly. "Don't you know the first time people hear you speak, they know they are privileged to know you don't think lowly of them?"  
"Am I so arrogant that way?" Subaru blows on the bang that falls over Kamui's eyes. Then, he pushes it behind Kamui's ear.  
Kamui flinches and let's go of his grip on his twin.  
But Subaru doesn't move from his place. Still looking at Kamui, Subaru tips his head with tears about to form on his eyelids. "Do I really make you that angry all the time? I'm sorry."  
Kamui sighs and lifts up his hands to Subaru's cheeks. Looking him straight in the eye, Kamui feels lightheaded from a mix of frustration, denial, and happiness clashing inside of him. "You don't understand anything."  
He lets go and puts his shoes on.  
"I'm sorry." Subaru turns around, about to step forward.  
With his head still turned away from him, Kamui manages to say, "Stop apologizing. We're losing time."  
When Subaru goes to the bathroom, Kamui sighs again and feels his face turn red in more shame.

Subaru goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth and run water through his hair. Looking at his calm face in the mirror, he touches his mirrored face with his index finger. His finger lingers on his lips as he looked at his eyes with his doll-like expression: Coy, placid, and seemingly passionless.  
He leans his head forward and smiles, unable to face his own reflection. Turning away, he takes away his hand and sees a glimpse of that cunning face that scares him from deep inside: That other person that exists inside of him. Only that person knows this Subaru.  
Not even his twin knew of this person who was screaming from the depths of his soul.  
Subaru bites his finger through his glove…  
"It's time," Kamui calls impatiently from the outside and Subaru's answer echoes from the inside, "Yes, I am ready."

With his coat brushing against the dusty floor, his boots make tap-tap noises on the tile floor. He walks away and nods his head at Kamui. They pay downstairs and leave through the front door of the hotel before slipping in between the tight alleyways of buildings and jumping over trembling mirrors on the ground.  
Subaru glances back and his teeth show down on the water puddle below him. Kamui, who is in front of his twin, holds onto desperately to half of the dark left glove and the ends of the white ruffles of the blouse cuff.  
Hand-in-hand, they disappear together.  
 _  
/It was that day that Kamui just ran off for a little bit and I lost him in the crowd. Someone tried to take me away in the marketplace and sell me as a slave. A young man in black with a cross came to rescue me.  
Running hand and hand, he pulled me until we were in an alleyway. He knelt down and dusted off my shoulders. I was shaking all over, wanting to cry from the confusion.  
"Thank you!" I told him with tears in his eyes. And I wanted to give him something precious for saving my life. I opened my mouth in shock as I saw a drop of blood falling to the ground. I felt guiltier as I saw he was holding his eye. I took out something and put some of my blood on it to seal it with a prayer.  
I kissed it and the young man shook his head a little in shock. At that moment, the young man closed his eyes and pressed his eyes on my shoulders. He hugged me and pressed some of his fingers into the bones of my back. Whispering a prayer back into my ear, I turned red from the warm of his lips.  
"In our culture, when you want to be with someone forever, you give them something like this. What is your name, Boy?"  
"Subaru."  
"Mine is Seishirou."  
"Seishirou-san…"  
We looked at one another intensely._

"Subaru!" Kamui called out to me.  
I ran towards Kamui as Seishirou-san ran away towards the other side, but when I looked back, he was gone. Only a cloud of dust remained and I wanted to cry though I didn't understand why./

Minutes later, someone shows up through the open balcony door. A boy with the appearance of an eighteen or nineteen-year-old peers from side to side cautiously and holds onto his golden cross with his right hand. Then, he lets go of it and the curtain caresses his cheek and the black cloth over his hip. The torn tip at the end touches his mud-caked shoes.  
Slowly, he closes his eyes and smells the scent he's been following all this time. He immediately walks towards the bathroom. At the threshold, he instantly stops to see the red line on the bathroom mirror. His reflection has a red line over its lips.  
He smiles and walks over to kiss the line.  
It is his prey's blood.  
He licks it with his tongue. There are no words written, but he understands and now has swallowed the silent ones. A smirk emerges from his normally thin-lined mouth.

 _/A fourteen-year-old boy bumped into him in a bookstore. He bowed politely and guiltily. "I'm sorry."  
Looking up, they met eye-to-eye and Seishirou's eyes opened widely just a little. Did such beauty ever exist like this before him? But the boy was dangerous with that indifferent, doll-like face.  
Before walking away, Subaru whispered almost inaudibly, "You helped me a long time ago when I was little."  
Grinning widely, his teeth showed and Seishirou put his hand over his blind eye, remembering. Or rather, never forgetting.  
"You have to tear my brother away from me if you want me." Subaru turned away and ran away into the busy street.  
At that moment, Kamui's turned his head and his eyes burned into Seishirou's, imprinting one another's hateful image into each other's memory.  
"You gave him that burn mark that appears in the moonlight! I will never forgive you!"  
Seishirou lost sight of Subaru, remembering that hand that held onto his brother's so tightly./  
_

"Why do you leave marks for him if you know I will get mad at him for it and not you?"  
Subaru does not answer as he reads a small book in the train. Kamui waits for an answer but doesn't get any. He takes a deep breath and leans his head on his brother's shoulder. With his free hand, Subaru squeezes on Kamui's hand and then interlocks their fingers.  
He continues to read his book that's in a completely different language from his native one…

 **I want you to be jealous. I'm sorry I'm taking advantage of you, but you will forgive me for everything I do, won't you, Kamui? For, one day, you too will leave me. You can't help me all the time, can you?  
On that day, you left me for that person Fuuma, didn't you?**

 **And this person, no matter how many years he chases me, though we are aware of the worlds around us, we are still 'together'. He knows who I really am: that I am not always so kind and that I am not always so innocent as the face and body that I wanted to mar many a time.**

 **He marked me because he had the same wish as me.**

 **Doesn't anyone understand?**  
 **Seishirou-san won't give me everything I want unless I throw away my pride.**  
 **And I am not ready to do it just yet, but it is fun**  
 **to do it a little**  
 **at a time.**

Kamui falls asleep and Subaru closes his book, looking out at the train window with the setting sun and that tall glass building with the red lights continues to go off and on. Then, his eyes look down at the steel ground with melancholic, half-open eyes ready to cry.  
While putting the book away, he holds onto the grandfather watch ticking away like a heartbeat in his hand.

 _/Seishirou appeared from a mirror and kissed Subaru while he was sleeping. Kissing him arrogantly in front of Kamui, Seishirou smiled widely. And Kamui was too shocked to notice that Seishirou was pushing something into Subaru's coat pocket.  
Kamui ran down the hall as fast as he could towards them as Subaru woke up not knowing he wasn't dreaming. Disoriented and confused, he blinked as Seishirou leaned down and said into his ear, "When this stops, I can't chase you anymore."_

Then, he left through the bedroom mirror and Kamui broke it right after.  
They left home and didn't come back for a long, long time./

 **I always act like I am not afraid of anything,  
but I constantly fear of this stopping.**

 _ **Owari.**_

1/1/2008 2:35:58 AM - LA


End file.
